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Quotes by Irish Authors
"Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to."
"Take a strict view of their excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts and designs; because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool..."
"All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril."
"Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself."
"Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing."
"Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them."
"Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous."
"One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends."
"Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all."
"The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic."
"The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out."
"As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold."
"You use a glass mirror to see your face, you use works of art to see your soul."
"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience."
"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."
"Our minds do unusual things sometimes, Tamara. When we're looking for things it takes it upon itself to go down its own route. All we can do is follow."
"She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain."
"Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef."
"Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long."
"People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them."
"I must confess that most modern mysticism seems to me to be simply a method of imparting useless knowledge in a form that no one can understand."
"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
"To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact talk to every woman as if you loved her and to every man as if he bored you."
"The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities.... A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true."
"Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability."
"Success is taken by the man, who has made himself ready for its arrival."
"Written over the gate here are the words 'Leave every hope behind, ye who enter.' Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself."
"First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity."
"Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating."
"It is so easy to convince others, it is so difficult to convince oneself."
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